As the world remains obsessed with the same old thing, it becomes obvious that something new like the Economic Democracy Act has might be just what is needed instead of the “Great Reset.” Speaking of the Great Reset, today is the final day of the sale on our book on the GREATER Reset — The Greater Reset: Restoring Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law. After that you can read this week’s news items:
Bad for business
• Retail Theft About to Decrease? Good news . . .sort of. It seems that, historically, when retail store executives start to focus on “shrinkage” (theft, five-fingered discounts, shoplifting, etc.) it usually means that they’re about to take action and shrinkage will, er, shrink. That means a cost of doing business will decrease and profits will increase. That’s good news for investors, as the value of their shares will rise, and a bunch of rich people will get richer, at least on paper. Of course, under the Economic Democracy Act, it would mean more profits to pay out to investors so that they can spend more and the retail outlets make even more money, but no one seems to be considering that.
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| A Keynesian masterpiece. |
• Thank You, Lord Keynes. It was bound to happen. If you lie to yourself long enough, what you lie about doesn’t come true, it just gets worse. Almost a century ago John Maynard Keynes promised that if we just lied to ourselves long enough — for a century, he said — things would soon be as good as we want them to be. We’ve been lying to ourselves for over ninety years that Keynesian economics will save the world, and it is now on the brink of economic and financial meltdown. In particular, the experts are declaring that Great Britain, Keynes’s home turf, is now a poor country pretending to be rich. In other words, by doing everything Keynes said to do, not only have things not gotten better, they’ve gotten so much worse that some people are calling the country that assembled the greatest empire the world has ever seen a third world beggar . . . all thanks to Keynes. Can anything be done to turn this situation around? Absolutely . . . but they have to do it, not just lie to themselves about doing it: pass the Economic Democracy Act.
• Killer Mortgage Payments — Literally. The economy of real people — not Wall Street — has gotten so bad that people overburdened with high mortgage payments are beginning to feel that killing themselves may be the only way out. No, killing yourself is rarely if ever the answer. What is the answer is the Economic Democracy Act, which could get people more income, and the Homeowners Equity Corporation that can buy houses with underwater mortgages at fair market value and lease them back to the former owners in a rent to buy arrangement.
• Obsessed with Saving. People have evidently become so used to the assumption that you must cut consumption in order to save and have enough to live on for retirement that they can’t break the habit of underconsumption, even when they have more money than they can ever use. That is why, for their own sake, people need to learn that the better way to save is not to cut consumption in the past, but to increase production in the future. The purpose of consumption income is not to refrain from consumption so you accumulate a surplus, but to use it for its intended purpose. That is one of the principles behind the Economic Democracy Act?, and it would help rid the world of the notion that you must do without something so that somebody else can have fun spending your money.
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| Henry George |
• Georgism in Action. Back in the nineteenth century, the agrarian economist Henry George claimed that all land and natural resources belong to humanity, not to individual people, using a rather specious argument based on the assumption that an abstraction created by people (the concept of “humanity”) has an existence independent of the minds that created it and could therefor do something that its creator cannot, viz., own land and natural resources. That being the case, George argued, all profits from land use should be paid to the government as a “single tax,” which would solve all the world’s economic problems by making the State the universal landlord. Slight problem: George said tenants should get the use of the land for free, thereby yielding no profit to the nomal owner . . . but the nominal owner was still liable for the full amount that would have been paid if rent was being charged! This, of course, would result in landlords simply abandoning land as it would only cost them money without yielding them any benefit unless they were prevented from doing so . . . as is the case right now, where a ban on evictions means that tenants can live for free in dwellings owned by others who still must pay taxes and utility bills for the non-paying tenants! Of course, the Economic Democracy Act could solve the problem but nobody seems to be thinking of that.
• We’re Number One? President Biden has claimed that “his” economy is beating all others in the world. That may be absolutely correct, but just because his economy is doing well says nothing about how the rest of us are doing. If he really means the U.S. economy, however, then even if it’s doing better than the others, that’s not saying much. It’s like saying a man nine parts out of ten dead can whup the tar out of one ten out of ten parts dead. If he really wanted a strong economy that would benefit everybody, not just politicians and gamblers, he should demand the enactment of the Economic Democracy Act.
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially minute and a half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s new book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series. The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human persons place in society.
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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